Funny how senior officers forget they were JOs. In the DADT days my CO was a humorless bull dyke who would crush any whiff of people talking about gays. Forgetting she had been on the same seawall her entire career and all the maintainers of the various squadrons there remembered her free wheeling JO days.
Pretty sure the spine and humor gets removed at O-4. Much like E-4s, no longer fun, but not enough power to do anything. In fact my general equivalency formula removes the O and E, just look at the number to know what maturity, knowledge, and how much they can wreck your world.